How Texas Tech’s Office of Outreach and Engagement Unites Campus and Community with the InfoReady Engagement Hub

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How TTU  promotes, manages, and funds campus and community opportunism across the Texas Tech campus and the greater West Texas Region 

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The institutional priority put forward by Texas Tech’s Strategic Planning Committee was brief, to the point, and for many institutions, near impossible: “transform lives and communities through strategic outreach and engaged scholarship.”  Why “impossible?” Because as any staff member at a major research university knows, such institutions are comprised of scores, even hundreds, of autonomous departments, programs, functions, and offices – few of which are able to easily communicate even among themselves let alone external audiences, and fewer of which are even aware of the totality of the institution’s offerings.  

 

So the challenge for Dr. Birgit Green, Assistant Vice Provost of Tech’s Office of Outreach and Engagement (OOE), and her staff was, to say the least, significant.  First of all, Tech is a large, complex, multifaceted university -- a Carnegie Very High Research Activity institution, in fact, with 13 colleges and schools, 1600 full- time and close to 200 part-time faculty, 2500 academic staff, and a student population of 40,000. Equally significant is Texas Tech’s role in the region, as it’s the primary institution serving not only Lubbock but the entire West Texas region.  

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With the approval of leadership and key stakeholders, Dr. Green and her staff then worked with the InfoReady team to implement and customize an easy to use Engagement Hub, which OOE then branded as “Engage at Tech Central.” 

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